The advantages of examination of a bone marrow specimen undiluted with blood are well-known. Such an examination is essential for the evaluation of many hematologic disorders. A variety of devices have been used for collecting bone marrow specimens. Early bone marrow biopsies were taken from the sternum in operation-room procedures with scoop-like devices. Nonincisional methods utilizing the posterior iliac crest have proven less costly and less dangerous to the patient, and therefore more satisfactory. Such methods involve the introduction of a needle-like collecting device through the skin tissue, and the penetration of the bone cortex with the collecting device to take a small specimen of bone marrow tissue. Because of the pressure needed to bore through the cortex of the bone, and the subsequent cutting through of the trabeculae of the bone marrow, the cutting/collecting needles of prior devices have included integral finger grips of sturdy construction, such as those disclosed in Jamshidi, U.S. Pat. No. 3,628,524. The presence of such sturdy integral grips on the prior art collecting devices has made such devices expensive to use and maintain: the relatively high initial cost of the devices precludes one-time use, and multiple-time use requires resterilization of the device prior to each use and resharpening of the cutting edges. Needle lumens are difficult to clean. Tissue or proteinaceous matter left in the lumen can result in pyrogens that are unaffected by heat sterilization. Resharpening requires time and special skills. Thus, the amount of handling required by the prior art devices leads to high costs and increased chance for human error.
It is often desirable to aspirate fluids from bone tissue in addition to taking bone marrow tissue itself. Numerous devices have been available to aspirate fluids from bone tissue. Such prior art aspiration devices, however, have either been separate from the prior art devices used to take bone marrow tissue samples, or have used a bone marrow biopsy unit for aspiration. However, a bone marrow biopsy unit generally does not have the optimum diameter for aspirating fluids.